Your new book, What Color Is My World?, is about inventors. Why inventors?I wanted to pick a subject that would really surprise people. Most people in the world, including black Americans, don't think of black Americans as inventors of anything.

Was there a particular inventor you found really interesting?Lewis Latimer. He did Alexander Graham Bell's patent-application drawings, and then he went on to invent the filament for the lightbulb.

... I was hoping you'd go with Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the Super Soaker.I've never had the opportunity...